Stained Glass and Cathedrals
by Happiness's Deceit
Summary: Kei’s first memories of the cathedral are of stained glass and men in white robes. Pre-series.


**Title**: Stained Glass (and Cathedrals)

**Author**: Happiness's Deceit or crescenttwins

**Fandom**: Rust Blaster

**Disclaimer**: _I do not own Rust Blaster. I do, however, own the story below._

**Word Count: **2,850

**Rating**: PG-13

**Warnings**: religious themes, spoilers, dark themes, major creative license, pre-series, un-beta'd

**Summary**: Kei's first memories of the cathedral are of stained glass and men in white robes. Pre-series fanfiction.

* * *

Kei's first memories of the cathedral are of stained glass and men in white robes. The walls were white-washed and smelled strongly of incense; smooth brown benches were in neat rows along the aisle; a large cross was emblazoned on each wall, placed on a pedestal for sinners to seek redemption. In the front, a priest was speaking to a small group of parishioners, and Kei's mother gripped his hand as they approached one of the four large crosses.

It was a beautiful cross, carved of wood and lavishly decorated. There were gems that Kei still couldn't name embedded within, one of which would have been enough to support a family for a year. His mother (a blurry face, a forgotten face) had fallen on her knees before the cross and prayed to God in tears, hoping that he would bless her and her child for all the years to come. She had prayed.

And Kei, not realizing the importance of prayer, had reached forward.

A single gem had captured his attention since their arrival in the cathedral. It was a red gem, a gem that glistened like blood captured and made his small eyes go wide with eagerness, with desire; it was a gem that had sung to him, as if claiming him as its own.

He had reached forward; a single moment of entrapment, and then a gloved hand gripped his wrist.

"Do not touch the cross." A man in white said. "It is bad karma, even for children." His grip remained tight, and Kei was pretty sure he was going to have bruises around his wrist for a few days. His chest seemed tight, and Kei wondered if the man in white was a vampire.

Kei's mother stopped her prayers. She moved unsteadily to her feet, pulling Kei to her and out of the man's grasp. Kei exhaled as she did. "My apologies, father. I should have watched him better."

He smiled, "You have no need to apologize. You were deep in prayers, as all parishioners find themselves." He adjusted his glove before scorning it, removing and replacing it with another from his pocket. It was as if he loathed the idea of even touching the same fabric that Kei's mother had.

She bowed. "Yes, of course. Then, if there is anything else, father…?"

Kei was watched the next time the priest opened his mouth. "Your child has been promised to the lord?" There were no fangs, from his angle, but Kei thought that he might be hiding them somewhere.

"Of course, father."

A dark look settled across the priest's face. His lips drew to almost the sides of his face, a thin-lipped smile that did anything but reassure; his eyes narrowed until black encompassed their entirety; and he chortled, as if hearing a particularly amusing joke. "Than, my sister, you must leave him here. For when I touched him, the Lord said to me that he is the one who will change the world. He will be essential in purifying the world of those wretched vampires."

Kei had grown up with stories of vampires and their blood-sucking habits. It was said that they were beautiful, but that if caught unaware, their victims would be devoured of blood and slain with little remorse.

His mother had told him once about how a vampire had killed her sister. She had stroked his head, then, caressing dark locks as she murmured, "You have the same hair as her." And then his mother had gotten very quiet and made Kei promise he would not leave her. Kei had promised.

And Kei hated vampires.

So his mother nodded, convinced that the Lord was answering her prayers, and left Kei there. He watched the back of his frail (loving) mother bobbing through the streets before the cathedral door closed. And when Kei turned around, ignoring a painful ache in his chest, he was surrounded by men in white.

They smiled at him, all wide smiles that showed no teeth and their eyes crinkled deviously.

--

They took his clothes first. They told him that they were unnecessary links to the earthly world that needed to be severed before they took a hold of him and dragged him into sin. Kei let them go as soon as he saw the shift he would be wearing instead. It was white, the same hostile white that the entire cathedral seemed infused with, but it was clothing and so he accepted it.

Next they washed him with holy water, cleansing his hands and feet. It was necessary, they said, to ensure he would be allowed on sanctified ground. This, too, Kei accepted. They pulled the shift over him and it was loose, but not uncomfortably so.

The first priest (he never gave him name, none of them ever gave their names), the man in white who had spoken to his mother, led him into a stairwell that descended. The steps were dirty and cracked, and the priest paid no mind to it; Kei, barefoot, could not help but catalog the chips that tore at the soles of his feet. It smelled of mold and dust, and as the stairs moved deeper the light grew fainter.

When the stairs ended, there was a corridor. It was a dusty, dirty corridor that seemed depraved of light. They walked to a door on the left, one that looked fairly new compared to the others. It creaked as it was opened, and Kei was pushed in.

His feet were painfully raw, and he stumbled before hitting what felt like a steel frame. Kei hissed in pain, trying desperately to dull the sound so that he would not be mocked for it. He needn't have bothered—the door shut behind him quickly, and Kei was alone.

Kei screamed, as loudly and sharply

--

His screams had echoed—whether only in the corridor or in his head. Each echo pulled a little more of his hope with it. He had long given up screaming; his throat was raw and ached. Tears, too, had come when he realized the uselessness of screaming. Tears that hated the priests, the cathedral, his mother, and God.

And after all his energy had been spent, Kei raised his head and looked beyond the door he had been throwing himself against. The corridor was dark, but his eyes had adjusted, and so he looked to the place that was to become his new home.

It was seven paces across, and seven paces long. The stone bricks that it was made of were molded and cracked, and they wreaked havoc on his feet. In the corner, a bed frame was set up and a thin mattress (worn and dirty) was placed atop it. A thinner blanket was folded neatly over it. There was no pillow.

When Kei moved away from the door, it was then that he saw the final mockery. A small window, about the size of half a stone block, was carved into the highest stones of the room. They were in the shape of a cross, and filled with beautiful, ruby-colored glass.

It took Kei less than a day to smash the window in.

It took the priests one hour to move Kei into another room; this one, however, had no window.

--

The first time he was removed from the room, Kei cried in joy. He had been in that dirty, dark place for so long…

Within a minute of ascending the stairs, he was handcuffed to a table and the tears drew from despair instead. The men around him prodded him, asking questions and talking around him as if Kei didn't exist beyond the lab table.

Kei struggled when they tried to return him to the room, fighting furiously to get out of this sick and twisted place; he screamed as he saw a parishioner, begging to be helped. The man turned away from him, and Kei collapsed.

--

The next times he is taken out, he screams and cries and begs and is ignored.

--

They have stopped giving him so much water. Now, he must stop screaming before his throat is hoarse; now, he must stop crying or pass out from dehydration.

--

No one is surprised when he loses his voice.

--

Kei cannot remember when he was last taken out. He only knows that they have prodded him long enough. He only knows that even if he shouts, even if he cries, the result is the same. They will continue with their merry experimenting and he will still be imprisoned.

The next time they put him on the table, they wash him first. It has been so long since he has bathed, since he has been cleaned beyond the harsh scrubbing, that Kei nearly cries.

Nearly, if only because they won't seem to come.

--

He had thought it was from the dirt. He had thought that it was from the lack of light in the room. He had thought—

"It has been decided," a priest says. They all look alike now; Kei could not tell one from the next. "He cannot leave."

Another priest murmurs, "His body and his life all belong to God. Let him be useful in the service of the Kingdom." _Amen_ is echoed throughout the priests.

Kei sits there as the men around him twitter in excitement. He is so thin, now, and breathing is difficult. The cuffs rubs red into his thin wrists and ankles. He opens his eyes, squinting at the light. "Why," he manages after taking deep breaths, "why has my hair turned white?" He despairs, because his hair is his last connection to his mother, to family. And now it is gone, it has been _taken_ from him.

One priest acknowledges him. "It is a sign of acceptance by our Lord. You have been chosen. You were _born_ to be the container for the holy lance."

Kei doesn't know what that means.

--

They start giving him three meals a day instead of one, and Kei has been so _hungry_ that he never questions it. He eats until he throws up, and then a little less, and a little less until he can keep in all in his stomach.

He is—not _happy_—but more satisfied than he can ever remember being.

And if breathing starts getting a little easier, well, that's just a bonus.

--

Kei is ready to be taken to the table when they open the room. Instead, he is taken to a room where there is only one bench and a chair. He knows it is too much to expect being able to sit on a chair, an actual chair, so he sits on the bench and watches as a priest (another priest, another man, another day) comes in.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet the container of the holy lance." The priest says carefully. These people had never known his name, had never bothered asking; but before, he had been referred to as 'the boy' or 'the child'. "But what you need to understand is this: you are not a human, you are a _weapon_…and you will be treated that way. You will only be here long enough to learn what honor has been bestowed upon you. Do you understand?"

Kei nods, but the movement makes his head ache and so he stops relatively quickly.

"Very good." The priest began lecturing, then, without seeming to care if Kei comprehended it or could even keep up with the narrative. "A little less than one-thousand years ago, the vampires began to feed on humans. They justified it as 'strengthening their abilities' and ran rampant on the streets. They massacred us. Their so-called _lineage weapons_ were little more tools to slaughter us. Hundreds of humans died. More than that, they believed that they as a race were superior. The despicable vampires tried to enslave the humans to do their bidding." His voice was riddled with disgust and hatred. Then his tone turned towards superior, towards vindictive. "But the Church prevailed. An anti-vampire army was formed, and with it, a holy lance that had absolute purification abilities. The lance was a powerful weapon, and with it the Church sealed the murdering heathens away. However, the price of that strength—the sacrifice that must be made—is this: the holy lance must be contained in a human, in order to allow it to become material in this realm." The priest looked at him in the eye for the first time. "You are that container. You have been chosen to be the container of the holy lance. And with it, you must make sacrifices."

The priest stood, stepping closer to Kei. His gloved fingers brushed against Kei's pale hair, as if testing it. "What sacrifices?" Kei says, because he needs to know what other things these people are going to put him through.

"You will have a vampire drink your blood every time you must become the lance." The priest said. "And the lance will corrode your body and your humanity. This is the mission that you have been chosen for."

"To prevent deaths," Kei whispers, his chest tightening, "or to die?"

The priest doesn't answer.

--

He never goes back to that room, but the next time he meets the priest, he learns that the legend of the twin moons.

Kei thinks that he would like to be able to save people. He thinks that maybe, if he helps these people before his body falls apart, maybe his mother will want to see him again. Or maybe Kei can just help keep away the vampires that she despises so much. That would be okay.

--

The experimenting begins.

It is worse than the prodding, _longer_, and Kei stops remembering his past, because it is too painful when he is still surrounded by the sterile white.

--

The priests whisper of success and pleasing God.

Kei shutters into unconsciousness.

He can tell that they are pleased, however, because when he wakes he is in the underground room again and he smells the mold and dust with a sort of vicious relief. They leave him there for a long time, and it is only a little bit sad when Kei cries for the first time in weeks.

--

He never goes to that lab room again. Instead, the next time he leaves he is put in a room with chairs and a window and a desk; Kei opens the window and breathes fresh air for the first time in _howlonghasitbeen_ and someone chuckles. Kei doesn't turn around—it has been too long, and he _needs this_, but someone turns him around instead.

It is a vampire, that much is certain, and Kei cannot help tensing. He does not move away, however, because there is a priest in the room and that means that the vampire is _supposed_ to be here. His hair is odd and long, like a girl's, and one side in pulled into painful looking braids. And he is tall.

The vampire smiles at him and Kei flinches back. "Nervous child, isn't he? Well. It is a pleasure to finally meet the container." Kei decides then, that this man (_vampire, bloodsucker_) is no different than the priests. "I am Kain van Envurio—and I am the current headmaster of the Millennium Academy. What is your name?"

Kei thinks that this man is exactly the same as the wretched priests. But his name is something that he has kept safe from them, for so long that it takes him a moment to answer, to trust that this is something that this vampire can know. "Yosugara Kei, Lord Kain."

Lord Kain stops smiling. He looks at Kei, looking over him another time, and says, "I have someone who can wield the lance. You will be his weapon?" It is a statement, or as good as, and Kei nods. "Very good. His name is Aldred, and he will be most pleased to meet you."

Kei breathes more easily, and he thinks that maybe this is a good thing. He can save people, maybe, and help make sure the vampires remain sealed. He can stop deaths. He can _do_ something, and not rot away on the face of the planet like so many others might. "Yes," he says.

The grin that Lord Kain gives is wide and pointed, but more honest than anything Kei has seen since his entry into the cathedral. "I will enroll you in my school."

--

The uniform is crisp, fitted, and smooth. It replaces the shift quickly, and Kei does up the jacket so that no vampire will have easy access to his throat.

The priests give him a rosary, white and silver like the cathedral, and Kei accepts it, realizing that this is freedom. On his right ear, they put two silver hoops; on the left, they mock him once again. Two earrings pierce into his left lobe.

They are made of stained glass the color of blood.

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